Woman
by like a criminal
Summary: I hate to call this my version of the finale, but I guess that's what it is because yes. Meredith and Derek finally get somewhere!


_Holy crap I was racing time with this one. I really really really wanted to get it up before the finale, and as there's an hour and 15 minutes left, I think I've made decent time. Please tell me what you think about it! I really love writing Derek for some reason, and this took me a considerable amount of time to write. Seriously, I wrote the first 4 paragraphs and didn't look at it for a month. Which is why I wanted to get it up before the finale, before they did something and made me change my mind about it. FYI, the title that is the song is by Maroon 5.  
_

_---_

_I still fail to understand  
What it is about this woman_

Sometimes, with Meredith, Derek feels like his masculinity is being compromised. For the majority of his life Derek has been the manliest person that he knows. Growing up with four sisters and a dead father will do that to someone. When Mark became a part of his life, during college, Derek could rest easy, balls still intact, because Mark was a New Yorker, through and through, and privileged men who had grown up in Manhattan still had their quirks. Mark turned his nose at the thought of fly-fishing and in an effort to attract as many nurses as possible, worried far too much about his hair.

The nuances of Addison's femininity need not be addressed. She memorized designer labels, regularly scheduled manicures, even in the thick of their residency, and the other doctors had once dubbed the faint click of her heels coming down the hallway the "Montgomery-Shepherd mating call," as she was the only surgeon daring enough to shun sneakers in favor of tall stilettos.

Meredith Grey, though, she is an enigma. The first time he had takes her fishing she giggles exuberantly, grabbing her squirming catch in both her hands and trying not to drop it for long enough for Derek to take her picture. Meredith's nails are rarely polished, and when they are, the color is always chipped. She lives in jeans, or scrubs, sucks on the ends of her hair, and drinks and belches with the best of them. She teases him when he cooks, or insists on eating a healthy breakfast, preferring to live on only a steady diet of take out and pizza.

Every once in awhile, or rather when they have sex, which is more than every once in awhile, Meredith reminds him that she is in fact, a woman. This goes beyond anatomy, although Derek regularly delights himself in the curve of her breasts, or the warmth between her thighs. It is more than the pitch of her voice, when she moans his name, or the sweat that glistens on her skin as he pushes deeper into her. It is neither in the feeling of her fingernails dragging across the expanse of his shoulders, nor in the way she flips her hair over her shoulder when she is on her knees in front of him, her back arched, ass raised, looking back coyly and inviting him to enter her. It is when their eyes catch, for that brief second, and he knows that Meredith is completely open to him, and he thinks that if he looks hard enough he can see through her pupils into the depth of her being. The moments pass quickly and they soon collapse into a tangled mess of limbs and perspiration.

There are other times though, when her femininity is brought to light, and these times are the ones where she shows him that she needs him, when she stops pushing him away and lets him be her knight-in-shining-whatever ("whatever" most often being scrubs). In these moments, she paces and wrings her hands in the way that is so uniquely _her_. She bites her lips and stares up at him, her eyes full of unspoken questions and worries, and when she finally speaks the words tumble out of her mouth quickly and unplanned. He knows that he cannot solve all of her problems, but that he can make them better by taking her in his arms, pressing his lips against her forehead and murmuring something soft and soothing.

But then she returns to avoiding him again, this time trying to drown herself at the bottom of the sound. She comes back up for air after a few hours of death, and even though she is back and there with him, and he does not have to figure out how to go about living his life without her, he does not know what to do. So he hovers, he lurks, he tries to maintain his manhood as best he can by hoping to control and know every waking minute of her life so that she cannot disappear again. Now, it is Derek who paces, who runs his hands roughly through his hair, and takes deep, unsatisfying breaths that make his lungs feel as if they are filling up with the same icy water that consumed her. She tries to make it up to him, again in her own way, and he stares up at the ceiling and cannot bear to look at her after they make love. As much as he wants to stare at her and make sure she does not go away, not again, her very presence is a constant reminder than one time he was not looking. Derek does not know how to be a man about this anymore.

Soon, though, he can tell that she needs him in the ways that she has before, but he is unsure of how to force himself back into her world and make her accept him. He is terrified that he will manage but she will once again prefer to be isolated in her pain, or even worse, accept her friends' consolations over his own. They are the interns; they have always been a team, even through the controversial deaths of Denny Duquette and Mr. O'Malley. As an attending, and specifically as the attending that destroyed Meredith for months on end, Derek has never fit quite so neatly into the team. He fears that they will do this cyclical dance until one of them gets tired and the dream is over.

So Derek represses. He packs his feelings into a neat little ball and nearly slips up when he flirts with the cute brunette at Joe's. He lets his feelings go when he tells Meredith about his encounter, but she questions him, and so he returns to shutting his thoughts away. He represses his way through Burke and Cristina's wedding and doesn't bat an eye when he sees Meredith's lips twitch as they exchange their vows. When she tries to catch his eyes over her bouquet, he looks away, sets his jaw, and continues repressing until the clenching makes his teeth hurt and his cheeks stiff.

Time moves slowly and Derek shifts from foot to foot as the service continues. He fights the urge to laugh aloud at the irony of the scene before him. It is almost insulting that Preston Burke and Cristina Yang managed to become the most stable pair at Seattle Grace while he and Meredith flounder. It's not until the reverend announces them husband and wife that he realizes that Burke and Cristina have always been in it, _together_, and that he and Meredith are on the same page as rarely as an eclipse. Even when Burke had his tremor and they were committing malpractice on patient after patient, they were doing it _together_, side by side, a pair, a team, Seattle Grace's own Bonnie and Clyde, Macbeth and his Lady.

Cristina is constant in a way that Meredith is not. Derek knows that when Burke wakes up in the morning he knows who she is going to be that day. She is always the same pithy, sarcastic Cristina. When Derek wakes up, he wonders what the next adventure is going to be for the day. Cristina does not try to kill herself in the bathtub and then top it off with a dip in the Pacific Ocean.

Derek never thought that being with Meredith would make him feel so alone.

At the reception, there is music, dancing, and the usual post-wedding fare. Cristina shoves a piece of the red velvet cake that they so laboriously chose into Burke's mouth and Izzie Stevens jumps forward with her camera to record the sacred moment. Meredith's peals of laughter cut through the air, seemingly taunting him from her position nearby and Derek leans forward in his seat and rubs his temples. He can sense her watching him, observing, hovering in the way that he does for her and the repression catches up with him and makes him want to vomit into his steak entrée.

And then, something quickens inside of him and he tosses his napkin on the table and rises to his feet with a jolt. He crosses the room, grabs Meredith's arm, and drags her discreetly to the darkest corner.

"Derek, what are you - ?" she stammers before he cuts her off.

"Listen," he hisses under his breath. "_Listen._ Don't laugh, stop laughing, there is nothing funny about today."

Her mouth opens to say something, but she quickly snaps it shut, staring at him completely perplexed.

"Meredith if we're going to be in this we have to be in this together. When your father humiliates you in the hospital, and when you leave your intern exam blank, and when you feel like you want to die you have to tell me," he continues, quickly, rapidly in a low voice. He grips her arm tighter to slow his hand's shaking and his heart races. "You can't not tell me these things because," his voice breaks. "You just have to. I can't – I can't, I'm scared that we are heading in the wrong direction and you need to take this seriously. Because if we end, I don't think that I'm going to be able to pick myself up and try to live my life without you in it. I _need_ you Meredith," he finishes; surprising even himself, and sees her eyes soften. In a matter of forty-five seconds, he seems to have neatly castrated himself and placed his balls in her hands for her to destroy. There – it is finished, it is over.

He releases his grip on her arm and she puts a tender hand up to his cheek. He turns away from her touch, a low sound emanating from his chest, and looks at the ground, away from her, anywhere but at her.

"Derek?" she whispers, and he bites his lips, avoiding her eyes. He feels her palm resting gently on his shoulder and he runs his hand across his face. "It's okay, it's okay."

He sucks in a harsh breath and turns to face her again, his eyes flashing. "No Meredith, it's not _okay_, none of this is."

His jaw clenches, almost instinctively this time, and he stalks away from her and out of the hall to catch his breath.

The second half of the day is like the first and they continue their quiet performance that presents to all the illusion of a happy couple that is just too wrapped up in their best friends' wedding to care. It goes on like this until the reception is over, and Burke and Cristina have exited to go wherever it is that Burke has planned to take them. Derek does not actively think of Meredith again until he thinks that he can hear her footsteps following him across the parking lot to his car.

When he has unlocked the door and she slides into the passenger seat across from him, his ears prove correct. He sighs, and their eyes catch for a moment, before he puts his key in the ignition and starts the long and quiet drive out to the trailer. He can sense Meredith fidgeting next to him. The bouquet she held at the ceremony rests in her lap and he knows that her fingers are nervously picking a peony clean. About halfway through the light she switches from fiddling the flowers to tapping her fingers on the armrest next to her. To this, Derek sighs, and switches on the radio. The rhythm of Meredith's drumming stops, and he fights the urge to look at her once more.

"You can't just pretend like I don't exist, Derek," she says softly, and he can feel her eyes boring into him.

He grunts something in response, and presses his foot against the gas a little harder. It is Meredith's turn to sigh, and he steals a glance in her direction. Her hand is balled into a fist under her chin, and rests on the side of the door. She stares out the window, an in the reflection of the glass he can make out the slightest frown.

He clears his throat and returns his eyes to the road. "I'm not trying to hurt you, you know."

"Could've fooled me," she snaps, and he can tell that she instantly regrets it. "Sorry," she mutters under her breath, as quickly as the first sentence came out, and she sighs again. "I just don't know how you'd think that you're not hurting me right now." She inhales and exhales with force. "I mean really Derek, telling me that you met someone at Joe's last night is supposed to make me want to tell you things? It's supposed to make me want to _talk_ to you?"

Now the blood rushing in his ears clouds his hearing and his foot presses against the gas again, seemingly want to race against her words to get back to his land, his trailer, where he feels like he has some semblance of control over the situation.

She continues speaking. "How am I supposed to want to talk to you when you just keep not showing up, too? You get mad at me and you don't come back, even when you said that wasn't how we do things, and that I could count on you to show up, every time right? Even when we fight? That's what you said, Derek. I'm not making it up," she takes another breath. "But no, you don't. And then you expect me to tell you about my day, and Susan dying, and me not wanting to take the test, like we're this happy couple that you're not ruining every single day."

His car rolling up in front of the trailer punctuates her words. He turns the key roughly, and yanks it out of the ignition, but makes no move to exit the vehicle. When he finally turns his head to look at her, her hands are back to fiddling with the flowers and she is staring out of the window. He opens and closes his mouth, like fish on a deck gasping for air. "When you didn't swim, you left me and I didn't know what to do," he finally says and she lets out yet another disgruntled breath.

"Well then we're even aren't we? Because that's _exactly_ how I felt when you chose Addison." She opens the door on this note, and does not look back at him before taking a step out of the car, lifting her skirt, and making her way to the stoop in front of the trailer.

By the time he reaches her, her hand is pressed against the metal door and her head hangs low, her bony shoulder blades sticking out at him harshly from the back of her dress. Her head shakes, every so often, and it's not until he really sees what exactly he is looking at, and does not allow his vision to be clouded by anger, that he knows that she's crying. He stands back, and when the moment is over, she lifts her head and runs the back of her hand across her face, unceremoniously, and quickly looks back at him. "You have to open the door," she mutters, and steps to the side, still dabbing at her eyes.

Derek opens the door, and pushes it in, casting a glance at Meredith and still not entering. He stands briefly, watching her, and then goes all the way in, breathing a silent sigh of relief when her footsteps indicate that she has chosen to follow him.

He hears her sniffle, and then she mumbles, "I don't have anything to change into."

He gestures absently in the direction of the bedroom, and loosens the tie that strangles his neck. One hand finds its way into his hair, while the other flings open a cupboard, and pulls out a glass so that he can pour himself something strong. He looks over the bedroom where Meredith is struggling to get out of her dress, and watches until she is able to pull the zipper down and free herself of the garment. She sets it on a chair and finally looks up at him, drinking, from where she stands in her bra and underwear and their eyes lock for more than a split second, for what feels like the first time in forever.

"Stop looking at me," she says firmly, glaring in his direction and not waiting to see if he has turned away. She throws open a drawer to invite herself to his collection of worn in t-shirts and boxer shorts, and pulls the shirt roughly over her head, hopping on each foot until her bottom half is covered.

Derek takes another sip of his drink and fights the urge to laugh, because in _this_ moment he remembers why he fell in love with Meredith in the first place. She is the only person of her size, and the only woman who ever tries to mount a challenge to Derek Shepherd, even though she often fails. As the only boy in his family, he is used to having his mother pamper him. Even when he had caught Addison in the throes with his former best friend, she had still struggled to make it work between them, even agreeing to move into the tiny trailer, in the middle of nowhere, away from her posh Manhattan lifestyle, and trying to befriend his mistress. He imagines that if Meredith had been in Addison's position, she would have told him to fuck himself and he would have found himself on a flight to LaGuardia the next day. A chuckle slips past his lips, and they spread into a small smile when she looks back up at him.

"What?" she snaps, and this only makes his smile turn into a full-fledged grin.

"Come over here." His voice is low, and inviting, and she raises her eyebrow at him before she walks over, her bare feet slapping against the linoleum floor of the kitchen area. She gasps when he grabs her quickly by the waist and sets her on the counter, in front of him.

"What's so funny?" her eyes narrow at him and he smiles back, running his hands up and down her smooth, bare thighs.

"I'm sorry," his voice is serious, but his face betrays his amusement. "I'm sorry we're turning into this, and I'm sorry that I've made the past few days terrible for you." He runs a hand down her cheek, and her expression softens. "I'm sorry that I made you cry, I hate seeing you cry, but it's true, you know, you scared me, when I thought you were gone forever."

Meredith reaches out and pulls his tie off the rest of the way, letting it fall to the ground between them. She pushes at the suit jacket that is still on his shoulders and he steps back a bit, shrugging out of it and letting it join his tie on the ground. Her fingers work at the top few buttons of his dress shirt, leaving him room to breathe, until she puts her hands back up at his shoulders and work at the knots that she knows form in the muscles between his arms and neck.

"Okay," she finally says. "Okay, but you have to stop thinking that I'm going to just give up on this again. I told you Derek, something changed, and I know that you weren't there but you're going to have to trust me on this one." She meets his eyes, and he sucks in a large breath of air.

"I trust you," he licks his lips before continuing, "But you're going to have to trust me, every once in awhile you know? I made a mistake before, with Addison, and I know it doesn't mean much when I tell you this, especially with how it's been lately, but I don't want to leave you. And I definitely don't want to make the same mistake again. Besides," he lets his hands run up her thighs once more, "I don't think Addison would take me back."

Meredith makes a face and shoves at his chest, "You're an asshole Derek," but her mouth works its way into a smile anyway. "But let me just point out one hypocrisy really quickly before we continue." He raises his eyebrows at her and she presses her index finger against his nose. "You can't yell at me for not telling you things, when I know there's things that you're keeping from me, but I'm not sure what they are."

Seconds pass like hours and they are thrust into another long silence. He rolls his head on his neck until he can hear the air move from the space between his bones with a satisfying pop. He looks at her, and then looks away, running a hand down across his face and then idly up her leg to the hem of the flannel boxers that she wears.

"Meredith," he breaks the silence. "Do you think of me as … manly?" He regrets the words as soon as they pass his lips and especially when her mouth curves up into an amused smirk.

"Did you let Dr. Sloan perform gender reassignment on you or something when you were gone all those days?" she teases. "Because I'll hate to think that when I unzip your pants for the makeup sex I'm going to find a vagina."

He groans, "You see, that's it."

"That's what?" her brow wrinkles with confusion, and her fingers move back to kneading the muscles in his neck.

"Never mind," he mutters. "That's for a different day."

"Okay…"

"I'll tell you the other thing though," he says quickly, his tongue moving unconsciously to wet his lips.

"What other -?"

"Just go with me Meredith," he cuts her off. "Just – just go with me," he takes a deep breath and lets the words fall out of his mouth in a rush. "I'm not going to get picked, for Chief."

"But it's supposed to be yours!" Derek is a little surprised at the intensity in her words and he looks up with a start, he likes this Meredith.

"I know," he bites his lips this time. "It's just, Webber doesn't think that I can do you and do Chief at the same time. He thinks that if I become Chief, you're going to suffer."

There are a few beats before Meredith speaks again. "Why can't you do both?"

"I don't even think I can do both," he admits.

"So I'm a distraction?"

"No," he insists. "It's that I don't ever want to be forced to choose between you and the job."

"But what if you get it and then you have to?"

"Then I choose you," he says plainly, instinctively, the sentence coming out without a second thought.

She laughs, slightly, despite the solemn mood in the air. "Just like that, huh?"

"Just like that."

She leans forward and presses her lips to his forehead; wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling him close until his head rests on her chest and supports her chin.

"Does it feel better, now that we've talked about it?" Meredith asks, and he slides his cool hands up her back, under the oversized t-shirt that covers her. She winces from his touch and arches against him.

"Maybe I'm just not meant to be a Chief of Surgery," her body muffles his voice, so he's not even sure she can hear him, but her hands are somehow buried deep in his hair and scratching his head in all the right places, so he knows that she heard.

"Why do you say that?"

"Maybe I've changed," he sighs and his hot breath curls against her shirt. "Maybe I'm different from the person he thought I was when he promised me the position."

"Maybe you have changed," she admits, "but people generally change for the better," she points out. "And you're happy now; at least I hope you're happy?" She pulls back to look into his eyes and he rolls them at her, nodding complacently.

"Oh, I'm different for sure," he presses his face back up against her. "I used to be a man's man and now I'm standing here wallowing in my girlfriend's arms."

She giggles, and the sound tinkles down into his ears warming him, "What is with you and this man stuff Derek?" she questions. "Either way, if it will make you feel better we can play doctor and you can pretend you're Chief of Surgery with me," her chin shifts atop his head and he can sense her wrinkling her nose, even without looking, "Although that gives me some really weird imagery."

Derek snorts and meets her eyes when she gently pulls his head back.

"So how about that makeup sex, Chief Shepherd?" she bites her bottom lip, and he can tell that she is trying not to ruin her sexpot image with a laugh.

He lets his hands make their way from the back of her shirt to the front, "Is sex all you ever think about Nurse Grey."

"I'm not role-playing as a nurse," she glares and he chuckles.

"Fine then, Ms. Grey, I'm Dr. Shepherd and I'll be performing your mammogram today," he teases.

"Oh, that's not even creative," she begins to roll her eyes, but is interrupted by an involuntary gasp when his hands reach their target and shove her bra up an out of the way. "Besides, there's usually a nurse sitting in on these things so you don't get charged for malpractice," she finally gets out.

"I'm the Chief; I get to bend the rules a little."

"I can bend, I'm flexible."

"Oh, I know that," Derek licks his lips, and finally starts to feel a little bit more like a man.

---

_Yes? No? Maybe? I hate begging for reviews but I need something, even if it's a really helpful "Damn that sucked!" It's summer, too, so hopefully I'll have even more stuff up, soon._


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